


slices and cuts

by twofoldAxiom



Series: Chimeric'verse and Crash'verse [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Fugitives, Helmsman Shit, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 17:00:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4027762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofoldAxiom/pseuds/twofoldAxiom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“One more night.” You say. “And then you’re gonna be off this shithole planet.” <em>And I’ll never see you again, if you know what’s good for you,</em> you think. You don’t like thinking about it, but you have to put on your full-grown pants and suck it up, don’t you?</p><p>He looks at you, his eyes half-lidded and sad, or maybe it’s just the heat and the sting of the light making them look that way. You like to think he feels as miserable at the thought of never seeing each other again as you do. “Yeah.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	slices and cuts

**Author's Note:**

> For an anon on tumblr that sent [Snow Patrol's "Open Your Eyes"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SND7aGdl5Fw#t=87) with vacillating SolKat.

_Get up, get out, get away from these liars,  
‘cause they don’t get your soul or your fire._

~!~

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you’ve been a threshecutioner trainee for a sweep now. This is going to be your first season out of training, and you like to think about how your kismesis is going to feel when he sees you in person for the first time in that long. You’ve filled out nicely, even if you haven’t hit adult moult yet- lean muscle under your skin where previously there was little more than wriggler fat, sooty-black callouses on your hands from training with your sickles, and the better protein content of the food at the academy has helped you build up a couple inches of height.

You’re giddy with the excitement, at the thought of surprising Sollux at his hivestem and lording your new height and strength over him where you know he’s been living off takeout and instant mixes for his entire life, the lazy fuck. You’re just as eager to sink your claws into him after a sweep of scratching yourself up and thinking about him.

By the time you’re at his hivestem, and the place looks even shittier than you remember what with psionics having scrawled graffiti all the way to the upper levels, you can practically imagine the expression on his face. You’re glad there’s an elevator for flightless trolls, which you step into and take to his floor before hunting down the door to his apartment.

You’re greeted by a mess.

It’s an even bigger mess than you remember. There are no gamegrubs, but there are scorch marks on the walls, what looks disturbingly like blood splattered across the floor. Sollux is nowhere to be seen. You’re suddenly on high alert, ears perking up, pupils narrowing, shoulders hunching down slightly to protect your neck.

You listen. You hear breathing.

You step forward slowly, one hand on the sickle you brought with you because you can never be too careful in this city, and you glide your feet over the concrete floor so you don’t make a sound. The breathing is ragged, pained, like the sound you hear when the other trainees are too exhausted to even bitch about how tired they are.

Sollux is in the corner, behind his recuperacoon. You wouldn’t have found him without following the blood.  When your shadow falls across him, though, he suddenly jerks his head up, eyes wide and horns sparking until he recognizes your face. “Karkat?”

“The fuck happened here?” You ask, and your shoulders are still tense but at least you aren’t about to kill something anymore.

Sollux groans and uncurls from where he’s seated, and now instead of gloating about how you’re taller than him  now it just feels so wrong that he’s half a hand shorter than you, so frail looking despite the fact that he could break your neck without touching you. You want to wrap him in a snuggleplane. And you think that’s kind of stupid.

He’s still bleeding from three rips in his arm, which he’s squeezing down on. You frown. “What happened?”

“Draft drones.” He says, flatly, resignedly. He sways on his feet (his clothes are so loose on him, they’re falling right off, it disturbs you) and leans on the wall as casually as he can despite the fatigue you can see in his face. He quirks a small smirk at you, the shithead. “That teaches me to look through the door hole first.”

The blood wasn’t his. It was the wrong shade. The scorch marks on the wall, the silhouettes in the soot. Your eyes go wide.

 _“Two_ draft drones.” He answers before you can ask. “Of course they’d send two after me. Apparently I’m a descendant of a really good helmsman. Figures that shit would come to bite me in the ass and I don’t even believe in it.”

He’s rambling, and your bloodpusher is racing. Two draft drones, that means they’ll send more, what is he still doing here? You ask as much and he rolls his eyes at you, which you can only resist smacking him upside the head for by reminding yourself that in his state that would probably straight up kill him.

Your bloodpusher is doing more than racing at the moment, too. Goddamn him, and you recognize the feeling, looking at how wrecked he is- reminds you that he’s your friend first, your kismesis second. “You need to start packing. Now.”

You don’t want him to be a helmsman. On the Threshecutioner ship, you saw the helmsman, that desiccated wreck of a troll. You don’t want him to be that, you never want that for him, you know that’s what the draft drones were for. You gulp, and push aside every other thought that isn’t getting him out of here.

This will probably take longer than a season, squirreling him offworld where no one can get at him, but thinking about it, even as your inner voices scream at you that this isn’t worth it… he’s your kismesis. He’s your _friend._ You’d risk everything for him.

It feels unreal, thinking about it.

You realize you’re staring into space and shake your head. “Do you have a bag?”

“What for?” He asks, and then you do thump him, lightly, on one of his longer horns.

“For getting out of here, dumbass. There will be more drones.” You excuse him with blood loss, because otherwise there’s pretty much no way to forgive how stupid that question was. He perks up a little and floats away from you, and you think it can’t be that bad if he still has that much control over his psionics, but he bumps lightly against the wall like a dazed bee every now and again before he plops into the next block and starts rooting around for a duffel bag.

You sigh and sit on the upturned couch. He packs up surprisingly quickly but before you even try moving, you bandage up his arm. When the two of you are ready, you flag down the nearest shuttlebug and try to remember the route to your backup plan in case you didn’t make it into the Academy come Ascension.

It takes at least three nights to get there even by shuttlebugs that take up all the ceagars you brought with you, time which you decide to take to talk about everything that’s happened in the past sweep or so. The first night, the two of you spend in a shitty roadside skep that even says “Please don’t leave blood in the carpet.”

You sit down on the rim of the recuperacoon, one of those basic trap-like affairs that always have too little, off-colour sopor in them, and watch as Sollux peels himself out of his clothes and sinks into the rank stuff as if it were the thickest, most luxuriously concentrated slime on the planet. He looks like a daywalker, and you feel a twinge of something in your chest that isn’t muscle strain.

You take a deep breath and open up to speak at last. “You’re horrible.”

He snorts, and opens one eye that oscillates slowly between red-violet-blue, blue-violet-red. “Did the threshies make you sappy? I thought that was the exact opposite of what they were supposed to do. Super gritty and hardened and shit.”

You kick him lightly in his uninjured arm and he grunts, while you finally slide into the slime and shiver at the coolness of it. You’re warmer than him, but it must still be pretty cold for him, at least for now. “Shut up, I’m trying to talk to you about feelings. This isn’t easy you know.”

He makes a soft, tired noise that makes your chest twinge again. You sigh. “Do something to make me hate you again, you pathetic nubfondler.” And he doesn’t respond, so you drape an arm across his chest and wonder for a moment if this is too tender for the quadrant you’re in. You decide you don’t care. “You’re a piece of shit and I’m supposed to hate you, goddamnit. I can’t do that while you’re being pathetic.”

He actually laughs, and turns his head to face you at last, sharp planes of his face illuminated by the dim lights in the corner of the block. You could forget you were in a shitty skep for a while and think it was at least almost pretty, in a malnourished urbanite way. “Too bad. We’re naked, in the ‘cupe, and you’re spooning my bony hip. Karkat Vantas, there is no hope for you.”

At least the smugness brings a different warmth to your guts, a more familiar one. “Keep talking, you smug fuck.” You growl, and you actually want him to but he’s clearly too tired. The other twinge kills the familiar warmth and replaces it with one that you know you shouldn’t have, because you’ve started to purr.

Normally Sollux would tell you you’re a freak for purring at that, but his eyelids are drooping, bruise gold in the low light and making his eyes look that much more sunken. You hold him a little tighter. It’s a strange feeling, but not one you can say you’ve never felt for anyone; you’ve had your fair share of flush crushes. It has to be that, just because he’s so pathetic right now, and when he gets better you can tell yourself it was stupid and be his kismesis instead.

He kisses you softly, sleepily, and you let him. You don’t flinch when he bites your lip and runs his fingers through your hair in a way that makes your bulge coil uncomfortable and confused in your sheathe. He falls asleep halfway through the kiss and yeah, you can hate him for that, just a little more, while you fall asleep with a palm pressed tightly between your legs.

~!~

The next night is spent on the road, in a tent, because you couldn’t afford a shitty roadside skep. The sopor patches are expired and the recuperolls lumpy and itchy and too warm as opposed to too cold, especially as the sun stings your eyes even through the thick canvas of the cramped little tent. You can hear chatterbugs outside, filling the muggy bright-season air with their mating calls.

You’ve slept in worse conditions on the ship. Sollux hasn’t and can’t stop tossing and turning, and in turn you end up staying awake just to watch him sweaty and half-nude and actually kind of gross at the moment. Finally he gives up and opens his eyes, side-eyeing you. The light from them only shows up on his cheekbones, that’s how fucking bright this damned tent is.

You fan yourself with a leaf you’d picked up from outside, and taking pity on him that you don’t like admitting to yourself, start fanning him too.

“One more night.” You say. “And then you’re gonna be off this shithole planet.” _And I’ll never see you again, if you know what’s good for you,_ you think. You don’t like thinking about it, but you have to put on your full-grown pants and suck it up, don’t you?

He looks at you, his eyes half-lidded and sad, or maybe it’s just the heat and the sting of the light making them look that way. You like to think he feels as miserable at the thought of never seeing each other again as you do. “Yeah.”

“You’re terrible.” You mutter, halfheartedly. It’s too hot to put much behind it, you’re too exhausted, and you still want to hate him. He kisses your ear. Fuck him and his disaster zone of a mouth. Literally, if you could muster the energy or the gall to do so in such a serious, vulnerable situation, but you can’t, so your bulge will have to remain a frustrated knot in your sheathe for now.

You swipe a hand across his sweaty face for it, slowly, dragging your rough palm on oily skin and he makes a face that makes you want to smile triumphantly. There’s not much to it, is it, hating him, getting one over him in little ways like that until he does you back by shocking your hip and making you yelp.

The sun takes far, far too long to set, and it’s not even completely out of the way before you two decide enough is enough and put on your clothes before you crawl out of the tent to breathe the dusty air. It’s terrible, but after the humidity in the tent, it’s a blessing, and both of you suck in as much as you can, wishing you didn’t have to wear pants. You suppose you don’t really, now that you’re this far from any sort of other trollish contact, but neither of you make any move to strip down again, and besides, the suckerbugs are coming out and you don’t want fevers.

You’re surprised at how far he can walk before he collapses on his knees and tells you to wait, goddamnit Karkat. You stand beside him, watching him pant, watching stars pop into being overhead. When he doesn’t get up after five minutes, you drag him to his feet and he hisses at you, and you hiss back, hair on the back of your neck standing on end.

The two of you stay locked like that for another minute or so before he backs down first, straightening his glasses on his nose. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” It comes out rougher than you intend, and the scant hair along your spine is still sticking up, your shoulders still hunched, but then you loosen up your stance a little at the look on his face and really, really hate yourself for doing so with such ease. You glance away, and lick across your teeth. “Come on, we need to keep moving. The faster we get you off Alternia, the less likely the draft drones will zero in on us and get you.” Not to mention execute you for trying to take him away in the first place.

You look him right in the eye and start walking again. He sighs and stumbles after you, too tired to even try to float after instead. Another few minutes in and you find yourself slinging his uninjured arm over your shoulder and helping him walk until you find the nearest shuttlebug station.

You have enough money for another bug and a few sandwiches at least. He eats one of the sandwiches beside you in the bug and sleeps on your sunburnt shoulder not long after, and you lean against the shuttlebug’s door so you don’t get impaled on one of his longer horns. You wonder if you’re going to make it back to the ship in one piece, if anyone finds out about what you’ve done. Who knows, maybe one lost lowblood won’t mean anything to them.

You finally find yourself falling asleep as the shuttlebug scurries down the road, the soft buzz of its biomechanical engine lulling you down, and if you have daymares, you don’t remember them by the time you wake up in the forest and the bug’s asleep, and the faint light is filtering through the leaves.

You wake Sollux by shaking his shoulder, and when he looks blearily up at you, mouth hanging open slightly, a bit of drool on the corner of his lip, you can’t believe how beautiful you think he looks, how perfectly pitiful. You chalk it up to knowing he’s going to leave you forever.

“We’re here.” You say, and slide the door open, peeling off your jacket and tying it around your shoulders. He wobbles out of the shuttlebug and closes the door, and as you’ve already paid after punching in the coordinates, the shuttlebug turns around and starts scuttling back to the station. You watch it go down the road until it disappears, both of you, then you look at Sollux and gesture for him to follow.

~!~

“So this is your plan.” He said, once you uncovered the leafy tarp and the ship you’d squirreled away here so long ago. The keypad on the side responded seamlessly, as it should after all the maintenance you’d done on it before you’d left, even if it was for a sweep. The bulkhead slides open and a ramp slides to the ground, and you gesture for Sollux to step inside. He does, starts poking around the dustless interior almost immediately. You think this would be the best time for you to start walking away, because even with the sun beating down, you don’t want to watch as the ship, and your best friend, rise into the sky.

“Hey, where are you going?” He calls, and you wince; you want to keep walking, but then he calls again, “KK?” And you can’t do it; you can’t bring yourself not to turn around. He’s leaning against the edge of the doorway on his good arm, peering out at you and squinting against the glare of the sun.

You want to stay silent and keep walking, but your feet won’t obey you, so you make a frustrated little growl and face him properly. “What the fuck are you waiting for, Sollux? Put on a flightsuit and get out of here. It’s what I brought you here to do.”

He narrows his eyes, his mouth opening slightly before closing again, and then he speaks. He glances away from you, into the dark interior of the ship. “I thought you were coming.”

“I can’t.” You say. “Duty calls, remember? I can’t just give this up. You know I can’t just give this up.”

“But you could.” He says, looking back up at you, though his head is down and his shoulders up in that tense way he does when he’s fighting himself for every word. “You could come with me. Somewhere. Anywhere. Fuck duty, KK; I’m doing that.”

“Duty for you is the helm, which sucks. You’re asking me to give up my dream here, Sollux.” You find your voice shaking slightly, and then he sparks around his horns and steps out from the ship, back into the light. You hiss. “I said get back in the ship!”

“Come with me.” He presses, so close you can feel his breath on your face, even as you look down on him. He licks his teeth the same way you do, with a little give for the sheer size difference between his doubled fangs and the rest. You want to punch him in the mouth. “Come on. I know you always wanted to be a threshie, but let’s be realistic- they’re as casteist as anyone else. You used a darkener and they still treat you like shit, didn’t they?”

You look away from that because it’s true, but not before shoving him and watching him nearly topple. “Go, idiot. Now.”

“When you run out of darkener, or if they catch you with it, you know what’s going to happen, right?” It’s not even a real question, you think, because there’s little to no chance they won’t find out about the darkener someday, something you’d pushed to the back of your mind with the blind hope that you’d be a good enough soldier by then that they wouldn’t care that you’re a filthy mutant. Hearing it from Sollux stings, though, because it’s less avoidable from someone else’s voice.

You glare at him, and bare all your teeth. “Get in the ship, fucker.”

“Not without you.” He repeats.

You lunge.

He’s too weak to stop you midway with his psionics like usual, so you’re a little surprised when your bodies actually collide, but you take advantage of it to pin him, and he bites your lower lip so hard that you feel him draw blood. You crush your lips into his and grind against him, and you’re so pent up that you don’t care that there isn’t a bucket and it’s the middle of the goddamn day, you _need_ this.

He fights you in the best way, writhing against you, clawing your hands and when you let go down your back, wrapping his skinny thighs around your waist. He won’t let you pull back, merely lets his hands wander down and tugs your pants down your hips. You fumble with his, but his are so loose that you can pull them right off, and when your bulges twine together it makes heat rush through your brain.

Both of you cum much faster than you’d like. He must have been as pent up as you, which would be no surprise. The two of you lie there, covered in grass stains and cum stains and glaring daggers at each other until you’re recovered enough to sluice off the worst of the mess and pull your pants up.

You curl in on yourself like a wriggler, back to the ship, and tell him to go. He doesn’t, and instead he makes one last plea for you to come with him. “It won’t be the same without you, KK.”

“It won’t be the same even if I don’t go, you shithead.” You answer, and it has less vitriol in it than you want. You’re furious with yourself, and furious with him, because he’s making this much harder than it necessarily has to be, and it was Pretty Damn Hard already, as an old friend would have put it.

It’s not fair.

“KK, look at me.” He asks, and you at least tell yourself you want to refuse, but you don’t resist as he gathers your face in his hands and turns your head. You’re snout-to-snout, forehead-to-forehead, and the glow of his eyes almost stings a little, just a little. “I can’t do this without you.” He says.

“Bullshit.” You say.

“I mean that.” He kisses you lightly, apologetically even, and your bloodpusher twists so hard you want to rip it out. Your name is Karkat Vantas and he was right, you’re hopeless. “And hey, who’s to say you don’t have a better chance of being great out there than in the threshecutioner corps?”

You bite your own lip, worrying at the wounds his teeth have left. You’re not completely convinced, but you can’t think of a rebuttal. It would take time you don’t have to refuse him, because he needs to be off Alternia by last night. If anything, you’re going to escort him wherever he plans to go, and then you’re going to come right back to the threshecutioner corps.

At least that’s what you tell yourself. It’s a season long trip to the nearest backwater that the Empire hasn’t taken over yet, even with FTL.

You look at him very seriously and sigh. You take his hand and stand up.

~!~

_Take my hand, knot your fingers through mine,  
And we’ll walk from this dark room for the last time._


End file.
